


Out on the Edge (Screaming My Name)

by WednesdaysDaughter



Series: For Madison [5]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Darkness Around Stiles's Heart, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Pack Feels, Pre-Slash, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Stiles Runs Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:58:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WednesdaysDaughter/pseuds/WednesdaysDaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glancing down at the desk, Stiles pulls out his cell phone and tosses it next to the jagged piece of paper he tore out of a notebook from the eighth grade. He doesn’t think too much about the words he scribbled down and scratched out and rewrote a million times. It’s barely legible, but he figures there are no words that a runaway can say to make it better for those left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out on the Edge (Screaming My Name)

**Author's Note:**

> At long last, the main Birthday fic for the amazing Madison who gave me the idea of this fic a couple weeks ago. I hope she, as well as the rest of you, enjoy this stupid fic that's been giving me hell.

He packs his bag on a Tuesday, but doesn’t leave until the following Sunday.

He can’t even remember how many times he took it out to his car only to bring it back inside and throw it under his bed– changing his mind faster than he could catch his breath every time the darkness squeezed his heart. Deaton didn’t tell him it’d be like this. Stiles doubted there was any warning label that could’ve properly prepared him for how the darkness would crawl across his body and sink into his veins like a heavy blanket glued to his skin. It filled his lungs during the night and every time he tossed and turned it felt like a metal splinter was being pushed further and further into his chest.

Stiles wasn’t about to take a knife to his skin and try to pull it free, but he wasn’t going to stick around and let the shards make their way into his heart either.

He had gone to the edge of town a couple of times just to see if it would let him leave. It fought him, but eventually Stiles pushed his belief hard enough and broke through its hold until he could make it miles out of Beacon Hills without falling to his knees in agony. The first time he felt the grip around his heart lessen he nearly crashed the jeep in shock. When he later pulled over and cried for the first time in weeks, he knew the tears were born of relief and sorrow.

He had to get out before he suffocated in his own bed.

Glancing down at the desk, Stiles pulls out his cell phone and tosses it next to the jagged piece of paper he tore out of a notebook from the eighth grade. He doesn’t think too much about the words he scribbled down and scratched out and rewrote a million times. It’s barely legible, but he figures there are no words that a runaway can say to make it better for those left behind.

He doesn’t have much in the sense of money, but he has a full tank of gas and a road atlas and people have gotten further with less in their back pockets than he has crammed into his bag. He doesn’t linger upstairs, doesn’t sneak a peek at his dad who came home to a warm meal and a son who was already fifty miles down the road planning a safe place to stop and sleep.

He’s out of Beacon Hills before he realizes it and maybe it should concern Stiles with how he seems to be losing time, but maybe it’ll get better with every mile he puts between him and the Nematon. It wasn’t like he was the best time keeper when the insomnia started– minutes blended into hours, hours into days until he was functioning on five stolen minutes of unconsciousness forced upon him when his body shut down in the middle of the grocery store.

He had woken up to the panicked face of his dad and it was later that night when Stiles remembered that the last time he has closed his eyes for that long was four days previous and it had been a terrifying hour of sleep. He wasn’t keen on repeating that experience, so Stiles devised a nap schedule: Four a day for ten minutes when the pull of the Nematon was at its weakest. It wasn’t ideal, but he didn’t have any more unscheduled fainting spells, so Stiles had counted it as a win.

He’s roughly twelve miles outside of Beacon Hills when he feels it.

The faint whisper, a question, in the back of his mind that feels so much like Scott that Stiles half expects to look in the rearview and see his best friend sitting in the back seat.

He doesn’t stop driving even as the question begins to throb in the back of his skull, eventually turning into a demand that he turn around right now. He can feel the darkness pulsing like a bruise that refuses to heal and Stiles watches the red needle fly from forty to sixty and then to eighty until he can barely see the road in front of him.

“Sorry Scotty,” he whispers and the sensation lessens as the signs fly by and he doesn’t stop and rest until the sun gets in his eyes.

Twelve hours and two panic attacks later, Stiles crosses the California state line and heads east.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Stiles is gone.”

Allison’s fingers twist in her lap and she nods slowly, “I know.”

She looks up at Scott’s devastated face and feels the same ache in the pit of her stomach, “I felt him leave too.”

Scott’s hands are clenched into fits that shake and his wolf is scratching at the surface, begging to be let loose so he can hunt his wayward pack member down and tuck him away in a den safe and warm. Lone wolves die; they shiver in the cold and get hunted down like stray dogs looking for a scrap of food. Scott can try and reason that Stiles’ isn’t a wolf – isn’t in as much danger as an omega, but pack is pack and no one has felt more welcome and familiar in Scott’s life than Stiles: His brother before they played in that sandbox years ago.

“We have to find him.”

Allison looks out the window and wonders how far Stiles has made it. She doubts he’s even in California anymore. She can feel the slight sensation of a tether stretching out from her chest and across miles and miles of road, but it’s so faint it might just be in her head. Scott probably feels the absence more. It’s uncomfortable, but she knows that being here was a million times more so for Stiles.

Allison opens her mouth to try and talk Scott out of it for only a second when she remembers how out of breath he would get running messages between them, how he became her second most dialed number during the kanima crisis, and how he had looked at her not with pity when she buried her mother, but sympathy.

She starts to pack as Scott calls Lydia and then texts Isaac.

“Emergency meeting @ Stiles place ASAP”

The Sheriff was already waiting for them when they pulled up to the house. He held out a scrap piece of paper and Scott’s reminded of the day when Mrs. Stilinski died because John Stilinski has that same helpless look on his face.

The smell of his grief makes Scott’s eyes stings and he hugs the Sheriff.

“We’re gonna bring him back. I promise,” he says into John’s ear and a shaky nod is the only response he receives before the Sheriff breaks away and mutters something about paperwork at the station.

Scott can’t blame him for wanting to escape the empty house. When he walks through the doorway, Allison trailing closely behind, it almost feels like two ghosts are hanging around and the scent of Stiles has sunken deep enough into the floor and walls that Scott half expects him to be lounging on his bed with his nose in a book.

He tries not to let the empty room upset him, but his heart lurches anyway and Allison reaches out to grab his hand and squeeze.

He hears Lydia and Isaac arrive and they head straight upstairs.

“What’s the emergency and why are we meeting in Stiles’ room? Also… where’s Stiles?” Isaac asks and before Scott can explain Lydia’s already flipping through random papers left on the desk.

“He’s gone.”

She looks for clues for his whereabouts and she picks up his phone.

“Of course he wouldn’t make it easy for us,” she tsks before tossing the phone back onto the desk with a thump and sliding into his chair.

“Why did he leave?” Isaac asks and Scott’s frown deepens.

“It’s the Nematon. The darkness was too much for him.”

“You and Allison haven’t left,” Isaac points out and Scott shakes his head while Allison cringes.

“Doesn’t mean we haven’t thought about it,” she admits and Scott silently agrees.

“It’s hard for us too, like it’s eating away at everything good in our lives; our memories, our anchors… everything,” Scott explained. “It was just too much for Stiles. There was already darkness in him. After his mom died… well the panic attacks and anxiety just took over who he was for a while. I think what we did aggravated what was already there: I think it added to whatever was already in Stiles.”

Scott doesn’t mention how the foundation had already been laid deep inside his heart for the darkness to build on. He knows, as he watches the way Allison curls into herself that he struck a chord. All three of them were susceptible to the Nematon’s effects: Darkness was no stranger to them.

His words hang in the air like a thick fog and he sees Allison and Lydia swallow the lump in their throats. Isaac looks uncomfortable and Scott’s wolf is still trying to break free. He needs to quit talking and start doing and Scott doesn’t even know where to start and it starts to fuel the sensation of frustration churning in his gut.

“So,” Lydia straightens her back and looks Scott in the eyes, “where do we start?”

\- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Stiles is somewhere in Utah when he decides to stop and spend the night in a hotel.

His legs keep cramping up and his back is giving him hell for curling up in the Jeep on the side of the road whenever his eyes couldn’t stay open. The woman at the front desk doesn’t ask him any questions and he’s grateful. He’s not ready to come up with any lies just yet about what someone his age is doing on the road alone.

Stiles collapses in bed and falls asleep before he can pull his shoes off. He sleeps for thirty-two hours straight before he forces himself out of bed and back onto the road. He doesn’t have an exact destination in mind, but he figures the further away from Beacon Hills he is, the better he’ll feel.

For a half a second he thinks about heading to New York, the flash of dark eyes and stubble burn behind his eyelids, but he decides against it: Chasing ghosts is no way to live, especially since he was trying to get away from the ones back home. He hops back onto the main road and tries to push the thoughts of Derek away. Back home there had been little that could pull him from the dreams – the terrors that felt so real and unnerving – but occasionally Derek would pop into his minds-eye and scare the darkness away.

The music plays quietly in the background as Stiles attempts to empty his mind. The more he thinks about Derek the more he’ll think about Scott and the more he thinks about Scott the more he’ll want to turn around. The tether twitches faintly as if he’s still connected to them – to the Nematon – and he supposes he is. Deaton said the darkness would stay with them forever, but that was such an inconsequential concept when the life of their parents were at stake.

Stiles would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Occasionally he feels the phantom vibrations of his phone in his pocket, but he knows it’s not really there. Part of him had wanted to keep it, but he wasn’t dumb enough to think they wouldn’t ask Danny to track him down and he knew he wouldn’t have been strong enough to keep it turned off all the time. The temptation to call his dad, to call Scott or even text Derek would’ve been too strong. He vaguely wonders if Derek had responded to his text from Friday, but he dismisses the thought. It didn’t matter now; he was miles away from home and some silly text that he’d sent after escaping the clutches of a nightmare didn’t matter anymore.

Maybe they never did.

He drives for twenty hours and watches the “Welcome to Kansas” sign blurs past.

If he hadn’t slept so long at the hotel he would’ve made it further, but when Stiles settles down on the side of the road he feels a sense of accomplishment at the fact he’s managed to put three states between him and Beacon Hills.

His dreams are vague and feel like water colored memories that slip through his fingers when the sun filters in through the window and wakes him up. It takes Stiles a few minutes to come to full consciousness. His limbs are heavy with sleep and his eyes sting when they open. There’s something nagging at him in the back of his mind, but he’s already forgotten it when he stretches and his back pops. He looks out the window and suddenly he knows Scott is going to come after him. He saw the determination behind his eyelids while trying to escape the strangers in the hall signing as if their vocal chords had been removed. Scott stood with Allison behind him and the way they stared at him made his heart ache.

“Why did you leave us?”

The question rings in Stiles’ head as he starts the car and makes a split-decision to head north. He’s not ready to make it an easy chase and maybe they’ll catch up to him eventually, but he needs to get as far as he can. Maybe he’ll go back without kicking and screaming, but he’s starting to remember what it feels like to breathe and he isn’t ready to give that up just yes.

Stiles finds himself wondering if Chicago is nice this time of year.  Surely it can’t be hard to get lost in a city like that.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“What if we can’t find him? More importantly, what if he doesn’t want to come back?”

Isaac’s question doesn’t make them pause, but it does dampen their moods. It’s been two, almost three days, and they’re no closer to finding Stiles than they were the first day. Lydia’s been scouring Stiles’ computer while Allison goes through his phone and Scott flips through various papers scattered about the room. Nothing is very revealing or remotely helpful.

“Does he have any family he’d go to?” Allison asks and Scott shakes his head.

“He has an aunt somewhere in Texas and some other relatives up north by Maine, but those are the last places he’d go. He’s not really close with them and he knows that I know where they live.”

“What about New York?” Lydia asks and Scott looks at her in confusion.

“Maybe, I guess… but why would he go there?”

“It’s a big place, maybe he thought the noises and smells would keep him hidden,” Isaac suggests and Scott can see Stiles thinking along those lines, but Lydia rolls her eyes.

“I mean, that’s where Derek went the first time – maybe he went back again and Stiles is hoping to find him there.”

Scott’s mouth falls open in surprise. “Derek? Why would Stiles try to find Derek?”

Lydia stares at him as if he’d said something incredibly stupid.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know that Stiles had spent most of this past summer with Derek.”

This is news to Scott and he turns to look at Isaac who looks away guiltily.

“So Stiles might have been helping us look for Erica and Boyd over the summer. He might have also known a little about the alpha pack before you found out. He offered to go through some of the books Peter saved from the fire,” he confesses and Scott feels a little like he’s been smacked upside the head with a baseball bat.

“How come he didn’t tell me?” Scott demands and Isaac finally looks up.

“He said you were in summer school and trying to better yourself. He didn’t want to drag you into this at all actually. Considering your feelings – or lack of – for Derek he thought it’d be best if you focus on school and he deal with the spooky shit. His words, not mine.”

Allison chimes in.

“I guess that makes sense considering there are a lot of saved messages on here from Derek. There’s even a few from last month after he left town.”

“Does Derek say where he is?” Scott asks going to sit down next to Allison on Stiles’ bed to look at the cell phone. She shakes her head, “Stiles never asks and Derek doesn’t volunteer the information.”

Scott huffs in frustration before folding his arms over his legs and resting his head on them in defeat. He feels Allison lean into his side, lending him her strength. It’s enough to push the heaviness out of his lungs and he shakes the numbness out of his limbs before slowly standing up.

“He’ll know we’re coming from him. It feels like, he’s there in the far background of my mind and he’ll know somehow when he get on the road. We need a plan… we need help,” Scott decides and reaches for the cell phone as Allison hands it to him.

“There’s no guarantee he’ll answer, or that he’ll come help us,” Isaac warns, but Scott doesn’t listen.

“He’ll help Stiles.”

Operating on a hunch, Scott presses the number two and then hits “send” and can hear it ringing before he puts it to his ear. Someone picks up, but doesn’t say anything and that’s okay with Scott. He doesn’t need anyone to speak; he just needs someone to listen.

“Stiles is gone,” Scott says.

A few seconds of silence pass and then Derek replies.

“I’ll be there in five hours.”

\- - - - - - - - - - - - -

It’s Stiles’ refusal to stop unless it be absolutely necessary that gets him to Chicago by Thursday afternoon. He runs his Jeep ragged and he’s not looking much better by the time he stumbles into a motel on the outskirts of town. He old man at the front counter eyes Stiles with distrust, but he still gives him a room for a couple of nights.

Stiles is asleep the second his head hits the pillow and he doesn’t dream. His stomach wakes him six hours later and he walks a couple blocks down to a diner where he eats without tasting the food. He sits around for a couple hours before heading back to the hotel and he sleeps for another five hours before he decides to go exploring.

He nods at strangers who smile at him and he finds himself with a pack of strays who like to follow him around the city. He feels free for the first time in months and when the tether in his chest weakens with each deep breath he takes, Stiles regrets it only a little. He imagines what it would be like to settle down in Chicago, but his money is gone and he misses the warmth of his home too much to commit to such a thing. He tries not to think about going back, so Stiles makes friends with a waitress named Anne and her son Max who are always there when he goes in for breakfast.

He spends the next five days eating, sleeping, and walking around the crowded streets of lower Chicago. He keeps out of trouble and keeps his head down and when he’s ready for a change of scenery he heads east a little until he’s standing on Navy Pier for the first time in ten years. He was six and his mom told him stories about how she had visited Chicago while on a trip back home and fell madly in love with Navy Pier. They spent one weekend together walking up and down the 3,300 ft. pier until they reluctantly headed back to Beacon Hills. Stiles still has the seashells from their trip on the desk back home.

If he closes his eyes, Stiles can imagine he’s six again and that his mom is walking next to him, pointing out shops and boats that were there when she visited long ago. It makes his heart ache in a good way and he’s tempted to sit and watch the sun rise and set until he’s forgotten what he was running from in the first place.

On his third day there he’s leaning against the railing and staring out at the water when he feels someone stand next to him. Instantly, Stiles knows who it is and he smiles without hesitation.

“How did you find me?”

Derek hunches over until he’s leaning over the rail like Stiles and doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Stiles enjoys the silence, it’s comfortable like it used to be over the summer.

“Scott called. When I got to your house I saw the shells and remembered you telling me about a trip you took with your mother. You almost fell over the rail,” Derek recalls fondly as if he had been there and Stiles laughs.

“Mom was so scared, gave me a serious talking to in front of all these strangers. It was awesome.”

Derek ducks down to hide his smile, but Stiles catches it anyway.

“How mad are they?”

Derek looks up and his eyes are softer than they were before. It makes Stiles’ breath catch, but it’s Derek’s words that make it hard to breathe.

“They’re not mad Stiles, they’re worried. They understand why you left, but they need you to come home. They need you Stiles.”

Stiles swallows the lump in his throat and looks back at the water as a boat sails past. He wishes he were on that boat instead of here where the guilt is slowly eating at him.

“I was dying there Derek. I couldn’t breathe and the nightmares were so real it was like I was going mad. I wasn’t strong enough,” Stiles chokes on his words and Derek shakes his head – reaching out to touch Stiles and ground him.

“Hey,” Derek whispers and turns to pull Stiles against his chest.

This Derek is warm and soft in a way the other Derek wasn’t. It doesn’t feel weird to sink into Derek’s chest and just breathe. It doesn’t feel wrong to wet his shirt with a few stray tears and when he finally pulls away, it feels right to slide their hands together and walk down the pier to where Scott and the others are waiting.

It feels like an anvil slams into his chest when he sees Scott and he doesn’t register breaking away from Derek to throw himself as his best friend. Scott’s embrace is so tight it hurts to breathe, but Stiles squeezes back harder.  There’s no gasoline, but it feels like they’re back on that edge where they only had each other to anchor to and Scott’s speaking and Stiles is apologizing and by the end of it they’re laughing and crying like idiots.

 “Come on,” Scott sniffs beaming at Stiles like he used to do when they were little and Stiles shared the cookies his mom used to bake, “let’s go home.”

\- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Stiles left home on a Sunday and comes back on a Monday.

It doesn’t feel like it’s been two weeks since he slept in his bed, but the circles under his dad’s eyes are a more accurate portrayal of time than Stiles ever wanted. His apologies are brushed aside in favor of a bone-crushing hug and Stiles wonders how he ever could have left his dad.

Scott stays the night and is there when the nightmares tear into Stiles’ healed skin. They wake up warm and tangled together and it feels much better than waking up alone and terrified.

“I knew you always wanted this,” Stiles jokes and gestures to his body as Scott pretends to gag and throws a pillow at his face.

“In your dreams man,” Scott grins and the ache dulls until Stiles can smile without forcing it.

Crossing into Beacon Hills had nearly destroyed Stiles. The voices grew louder and his heart was struggling to beat despite the pressure trying to silence it permanently. They had to pull over and Derek held Stiles on the side of the road after he threw up and continued to shake like his joints were coming unhinged. It took Stiles twenty minutes to stop seeing shadows move behind the trees and Derek held Stiles’ hand until they saw the Sheriff standing on the front porch.

Derek doesn’t risk sneaking into Stiles’ room until Friday and he makes it in time to wake Stiles from a nightmare.

“Hey,” Stiles whisper, voice hoarse from screaming and Derek carefully slides into bed when Stiles scoots over. They don’t speak; Stiles drapes himself over Derek’s chest and listens carefully to the way he inhales and exhales. It is peaceful.

Eventually though, Stiles asks a question he never got the answer to.

“Does it ever get easier?”

Derek turns his head to look down at Stiles and takes a deep breath Stiles feels like a warm caress down his spine.

“I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask.”

Stiles looks up and shrugs, “You’re the only person to ask. You’re the only one who won’t sugar coat it; the only one who won’t lie to me.”

Derek considers that for a moment and nods. His voice is rough when he replies, but it eases the doubt nestled in Stiles’ chest.

“In time, the nightmares will become fewer and breathing won’t hurt as much. It’ll take a lot of time though and help. Having someone there helps.”

Stiles leans up and for a moment he contemplates kissing Derek. Instead he rests his forehead against Derek’s and just breathes.

“Will you help me?”

He wants to ask if Derek will stay, if he’ll stick around in a town that holds nothing but sadness for him to help some stupid kids fight something that’s eating them alive. He wants Derek to say he’ll never leave again, but he hasn’t earned that promise yet.

Derek leans into Stiles’ touch and his breath ghosts across Stiles’ lips like a promise.

“Yeah, I will."

**Author's Note:**

> Now that I got that out of my system I can grow lazy once more and wait a couple weeks before thinking about writing anything else. Granted I have a couple cute little ideas I've been turning over in my head for some time now.... but I'm gonna let them simmer for a while. Hope y'all enjoyed my "For Madison" series!


End file.
